Welcome to Colby's Cavies Caviary!

Hello and Welcome to Colby's Cavies Caviary! My name is Olivia and I am a highschool student and currently raising Cavies in the Lansing Area of Michigan. If you browse our website a little more, you will find our breeders, our available pigs, current litters, and much much more! To stay in touch with people interested in knowing about our caviary and what is happening in it, we have created a blog that is updated every so often. If your interested in a cavy, please email me and I will respond within a few hours!

All of our cavies are housed in cages that are appropriate for them, we never use cages that are bought from Pet Stores, because we believe they are to small. We use stacker cages that are much easier for cleaning and space for separated boars and soon to be mothers, We highly suggest the use of Midwest Cavy Cages or C&C Cavy Cages, this lets your Guinea Pig have lots of space and room to run around in and have fun! We personally feed Buckeye, this gives our cavies a way to give them the best health and for a smaller cost. We will be trying to switch up some feeds in a few weeks, adding a few All of our cavies are in large stacking cages. Single show pigs get their own cage, but I use the same size cage for up to breeding trios of pigs (they are quite large!). I also have a large stacking cage for larger breeding groups of pigs and groups of sows or groups of boars (luckily for me, I have not had any boars not get along!). I currently use pine pellets for my longhairs, and fleece for everything else.

My Goal

At Colby's Cavies Caviary, my goal is to produce strong healthy lines, that is the first thing we think about when coming to breed Skinny, Baldwin, Silkie, and American lines. The second thing, is, nice coloring and patching. We always try to produce showable and nice pigs for the show table, but lines are most important to us!

My cavies are always the perfect weight and color for your liking. If you don't like the cavy you got, feel free to bring him/her back and I can promise you a different one! Check out our Sales Policies to check about more on that.

To be a perfect caviary, we try not to have numbers over 50, and this includes all litters, newborn babies, breeding adults, retired pigs, pet only pigs, and etc. This will keep our caviary a safe and happy place for all to enjoy. We clean cages every weekly depending on what the cavy is on (ex; short hairs are on wood chips, and longhairs are on pine pellets). We feed Buckeye Guinea Pig diet, but will be switching it up a little bit here shortly. Our cavies are given vegetables and fruits every couple of days.

My Story

It all started with Flower, a beautiful, middle aged (about 4 years) Black/White Texel. I got Flower from a so called "friend" who I soon learned abused her. I got her skinny, I was upset deeply so I did my best to plump her up, and I did. Flower was a huge Guinea Pig, more than likely around 3 or 4 pounds. Flower was very, very adventurous and I was surprised with her being abused in her past. After seven months, I found my other "so called friends" bought two cavies from Pet Smart, they named them Carmel and Smorez. After two months of owning them, they got bored from them and little did I know they never touched them, and they barley even fed them. They were supper skinny when I got them I was surprised that they had survived. I got them in October 2009, I knew that they were very young, so I suspected their age about June 18th, 2009 - and that's what it has always been around here. When I realized that Flower's cage was NOT big enough for three cavies (and was even tiny for just one cavy), I purchased a 2x3 C&C Cage with a 1x2 top part. They LOVED their cage SO much, but Flower and Carmel chewed up the ladder up to the second story so I just took it out and took down the second story part. In December of that year, Carmel got pretty ill, it turned out, she was pretty young and was trying to give birth, with no luck, she gave birth to a still born baby boar on December 13th, 2009. Then, she passed away of exhaustion the next day. So, Smorez and Flower were doing pretty fine, Flower was always the dominate one of the group so whenever something happened Flower got over it fairly quickly, which led the Smorez to play along with it and she eventually got over it a swell. So, Smorez and Flower were loving having more cage space to them selves while I was still crying over the fact she was dead. When April of 2011 came around, Flower passed away of old age at a whooping 6 years old. Smorez was so depressed. She never really ate, drink, or was never really social. Somehow she managed to live with barley eating or drinking, and to this day she still has the same water/hay/food everyday for a week (if I didn't change it regularly it all could last that long if not longer). When early March of 2012 came along, I attended a Cavy show at the MSU Pavilion in Lansing, Michigan. There I purchased a beautiful Skinny Carrier sow, who was named "Ruthie", I soon named her "Debbie" after the breeder. Debbie has been such a blessing to my cavy family as it has grown. She is always the cavy that comes right to the front whenever I open up the cage door asking for treats. Smorez and Debbie lived together for awhile, as my herd grew, I purchased several cavies including Dakota Chase, Mars, Lace, Venus, Elli, Conrad, and Frosty. Once I got Mars and Venus, I separated Debbie and Smorez so Mars and Debbie could be put into breeding so they could have babies. Now after that happened, Smorez and Debbie really didn't get along anymore. Both turned pretty dominate and don't usually work together very well. At the March 2nd-3rd, 2013 (first show of the year) Show at MSU, I purchased several cavies for breeding. Now I am much more advanced in my caviary, but we still don't keep to many in our caviary, just for the purposes of us wanting each and every one of them to have the proper amount of attention and love.

Now there are many, many more details I could have added to this story. There are many that were important things that I left out, and there were many that weren't very important that I left out. As our caviary grows, so does our story.

Our Caviary

Colby's Cavies is both an open and closed caviary. We do not allow visitors, but we do sell to the public. We sell our cavies for breeding, show, and pet purposes. The reason we do not allow people in our caviary is because we've had a bad experience with a person with a flu come into our caviary, and kill off most of our stock because of it. We try to socialize all of the cavies we can, but sometimes it just isn't possible. All of our babies are handled from their birth, and some times babies are bottle fed for a few days to insure they are getting enough milk. I currently raise the following breeds/varieties: American & American Satin: TSW/BrokenCoronet: TSW/BrokenSilkie & Silkie Satin: TSW/BrokenTexel: TSW/Broken